SEP 01

The United Nations works hard creating vast tables of data showing everything from traffic fatalities to at-risk mollusk species. The trouble is, that data is vastly boring. It may have an effect on UN policy, but it certainly won't have an effect on the average person.

But now it just might. The geeks at WorldMapper.org have created a system that graphs this UN data into maps. Suddenly he data become ridiculously simple to understand. The map above, with the over-inflated United States and Japan, you might have guessed, shows CO2 emissions per country. One of the most fascinating things I discovered is how closely that mirrors the map of wealth per country. The map below, on the other hand, shows population (we don't know why Antarctica shows up at all, but there you have it.)

The project is run by Danny Dorling and Anna Barford of the University of Sheffield, UK and they already have over three hundred maps. Aside from being an extremely fast way to brief yourself on the state of the world, it's also simply fascinating. The statistics on teenage mothers blew me away, and the series on centers of world wealth from 2000 years ago to 2015 on tells a story that couldn't be told in 100,000 words.

It's becoming clear that understanding data is much more important than simply having data, so we're happy to applaud worldmapper's efforts. Now that we can see the problems clearly, there's nothing in the way of all the affected countries actually doing something about it, right?

Comments (7)

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*correction
written by Alaya, September 01, 2008

Hi Hank

Just to clear things up... its www.worldmapper.ORG

not .com as you wrote in the article

Cool find though and very interesting stuff!

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Very Cool
written by Alyson, September 02, 2008

I have a thing for maps, I love looking at them. And this is just really interesting. Thanks for the heads up!

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Antartica
written by EV, September 02, 2008

Hank, McMurdo Station (among a few others) is in Antarctica and has people in that. That is probably why Antarctica shows up

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Cartogram
written by Alex Yule, September 02, 2008

Yeah, they're called Cartograms. Cool stuff.
http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/proj..._Central/

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Worldmapper
written by Audi, September 02, 2008

We've seen these for over a year on the Irish forums which a lot of us frequent here and we've found that the data isn't so up to date - I'm thinking of military spending. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Despite that they are so cool! I love the ones of "Toys Exports" (Goods) and "Computers Exports" (Manufacturers) where you can see the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore respectively as being disproportionately enormous. These are cities, bear in mind.

Another great site is www.worldometers.info - not graphical but great stats that you can stare at.

And yeah, it's important that we are learning to appreciate how data is presented which is important though as a teacher of adults I find that many people simply do not comprehend worldmapper.

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...
written by yoko homa, September 02, 2008

The CO2 emissions map seems wrong. Surely burning a Scotland per year - which is what is coming out of the rainforest - must make Brazil a far bigger emitter than is recorded here. About 20% of CO2 emissions are supposed to come from burning forests.

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Awestruck in Failure
written by Kevyn, October 01, 2008

Antarctica? I think you'll find, if you compare the two maps, that it is actually Oz with all the empty bits removed. It's even more deceptive because skinny Indonesia and Phillipines are bloated by their populations.

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